Islamic Spain: History's Refrain [a PBS documentarian longs for Al-Andalus]

The Christian Science Monitor (csmonitor.com) ^ | 22 Aug 2007 | Alexander Kronemer

[snarks_when_bored]

Islamic Spain: History's refrain

It's a model for interfaith ties, and a warning about religious division.

By Alexander Kronemer

 

Washington

The past sometimes provides examples of glory and success that serve as models. Other times, as the philosopher George Santayana said, it warns of impending calamity for those who do not learn from it.

For the past several years, I've been immersed in a history that does both. As one of the producers for an upcoming PBS documentary on the rise and fall of Islamic Spain, I've witnessed its amazing ascent and tragic fall countless times in the editing room, only to go home and watch some of the same themes playing out on the nightly news.

Islamic Spain lasted longer than the Roman Empire. It marked a period and a place where for hundreds of years a relative religious tolerance prevailed in medieval Europe.

[snip] ...

[snarks_when_bored]

Kronemer is aware that Arab muslims took Spain by force of arms, but only a single sentence in this little love letter to historical islam acknowledges that stark reality: "The conquering Arab Muslims remained a minority for many years, but they were able to govern their Catholic and Jewish citizens by a policy of inclusiveness." Yes, they were conquerors, you see, but they were so enlightened!

Read this sycophantic panegyric to Al-Andalus if only to remind yourself of the lengths to which dhimmis (and PBS) will go to appease their islamic overlord-wannabes.

[CheyennePress]

Ferdinand and Isabella: Badly in need of a sequel.

[x_plus_one]

Why women don’t stand up against this islamic crap is a good question.

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

I saw this earlier. Nice piece of Islamoganda.

[VeloCon]

Kronemer’s selective and revisionist history creates a myth that Islamic Spain was a multi-cultural Utopia. This is a common theme among history-challenged liberals who seek to project upon Islamo-fascists their own liberal hopes for a multi-cultural paradise, which they are closer to if they can erode the dominant Christian culture. Which they work to do, step by step.

What these idiots cannot see is that an Islamist state is their worst nightmare theocracy.

Cultural relativism is for lazy minds. PBS should be ashamed, and defunded.

[stop_fascism]

What a friggin idiot. There are so many stupid statements in this short article, it would take a week to correct them. The biggest of course is failure to recognize that the Reconquista was one of the great accomplishments of Western Civilization.

[wayne_b24]

correct-o-mundo.
you should go there, beautiful place, that formerly moorish spain. make sure to check out the jewish ghettoes (i.e. quarter) in cordoba, sevilla, and granada.

very tolerant and multi-culti.

did i mention the ghettoes? don’t forget to pay your dhimmi taxes (jizya)!

very nice.

yer tax $$ @ work.

[Regulator]

PBS should be ashamed, and defunded

Hmmm....now who was in control of the Congress from Oh, about 2000 - 2006, with ABSOLUTE control from 2004-2006....hmmm.

Gee, do you think that maybe, just maybe, they could have taken a breather from the mad spending frenzy for a few moments to cut the Socialist party's propaganda arm from the federal budget?

And that maybe, just maybe, something that simple and symbolic might have kept a few of them in the House or the Senate?

[tbw2]

Islamic spain DID NOT last longer than the Roman empire. The Romans lasted 1500+ years. Islamic spain, at most, lasted 800 through 1400 AD - 700 years at most. Andalusia lasted to a later date, but not longer.
THey need to learn their history and math.

[Publius6961]

Read this sycophantic panegyric to Al-Andalus if only to remind yourself of the lengths to which dhimmis (and PBS) will go to appease their islamic overlord-wannabes.

Unless this "history" includes the endless "resistance" to occupation during the entire 800 years of occupation by the heathens, it is in fact sandmaggot propaganda.

[FFranco]

To be fair, he might have been referring to the actual Roman Empire itself, from 31 BCE to 476 CE (about 500 years), rather than the whole history of Rome as a kingdom, republic and empire from its founding by Romulus and Remus in 753 BCE.

[irishjuggler]

BCE and CE? I notice that you’re new to FR, but please spare us the revisionist, anti-Christian dating system. The appropriate terms are “BC and “AD.”

[livius]

This stuff makes me vomit.

Southern Spain was a very advanced area, Rome’s leading colony, and one that even provided a number of “Roman” writers, philosophers and emperors. After the collapse of Rome and the invasion of the barbarians, it remained an intellectual center, although beleaguered. When the barbarians converted and accepted orthodox Catholic beliefs (as opposed to Arianism), it resumed this position, and shortly before the Muslim invasion, St. Isidore of Sevilla wrote a compendium of “all human knowledge,” including Classical sources.

The Muslims who invaded, or at any rate, the ones who settled there were recently converted (at sword point) Baghdadis and Persians, both groups with very advanced pre-Islamic cultures. These cultures withered and died within about 100 years under the dead hand of Islam, but during a brief period, these rulers remained interested in Western and Asian, particularly Indian, learning. (India is the source for the concept of zero.)

Originally, they even permitted figurative art. However, these groups were considered heretical and were themselves driven out by orthodox North African Muslims.

Regardless of the ruler, Jews and Christians were enslaved and had to pay a special tax; Jews actually came out a little ahead, because most of Spain was Christian and the Muslims had need for slaves, which they took from the Christian areas rather than the smaller but wealthier Jewish communities, which they taxed heavily.

Both Jews and Christians, however, lived in a situation where the “tolerance” of Islam could be revoked at any moment and often was. The Muslims continued to make incursions throughout Spain from their southern territories, regularly collecting “protection” in the form of payments in money and young women and boys from the northern kingdoms.

Islam stifled and destroyed intellectual life. After the rather brief period where the Muslim rulers were running on their pre-Islamic cultures, things fell silent. The intellectual life of Spain was actually conducted from Toledo, under the hand of Alfonso XIII, who established the famous School of Translators, where Christian, Jewish and Arab-speaking translators worked at translating works ranging from Scripture to Aristotle to pre-Islamic Farsi and Arabic works.

The Muslim rulers lived in opulence and did whatever they wanted; the majority of the Muslim faithful who had been brought from Arab lands were impoverished peasants for whom Ferdinand and Isabel felt so sorry that they did not expel them. They were repaid by the fomenting of rebellion and attacks on Christian villages on the Mediterranean which finally resulted in all Muslims being expelled a few decades later.

[livius]

Most of “Islamic Spain” lasted only a couple of hundred years, because Spanish resistance began very shortly after the unexpected invasion. Al Andalus (the southern kingdom) hung on for longer and continued to stage raids on the north, some of which were pretty devastating and resulted in the recapturing of places like Santiago and other northerly points. However, it was pretty powerless by the time the Reyes Catolicos took Granada.

[yarddog]

I couldn’t agree more. Every time I see BCE and CE I want to throw up. When I see those terms I know I am seeing bigotry.

[FFranco]

Are Jews welcome here?

[irishjuggler]

Are Jews welcome here?

Of course. Just spare us the politically correct BCE/CE garbage. It's disrespectful to Christians to try to re-name our dating system. There is no such thing as a "Common Era." The BCE/CE dating system merely copies the BC/AD system but pretends that it has nothing to do with Christ. It's revisionist and phony.

[FFranco]

This is the standard for non-Christians who do not recognize Jesus as their lord (what AD means).

Here is a quote from an article recently posted on FR:

Hebrew University excavations reveal first beehives in ancient near east in ‘Land of milk and honey’

Archaeological proof of the Biblical description of Israel really as “the land of milk and honey” (or at least the latter) has been uncovered by researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archaeology.

Amihai Mazar, Eleazar L. Sukenik Professor of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, revealed that the first apiary (beehive colony) dating from the Biblical period has been found in excavations he directed this summer at Tel Rehov in Israel’s Beth Shean Valley. This is the earliest apiary to be revealed to date in an archaeological excavation anywhere in the ancient Near East, said Prof. Mazar. It dates from the 10th to early 9th centuries B.C.E.

You may notice that dates are given in the BCE form.

I don’t object you referencing your religious beliefs by using BC and AD, but please give me the same right to not acknowledge adherence to your religion when dating events.

Nearly everyone understands what they mean, don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill.

[yarddog]

Using AD and BC has been standard use for over a thousand years. It has become common usage and it’s use does not imply worship of Christ.

On the other hand the deliberate use of another term for the exact same dating clearly is intended as a slur against Christianity.

It is phony and disgusting.

It is the exact same thing as if one was referring to King Solomon in a historical context but were to refer to him as Common King X.

[irishjuggler]

I don’t object you referencing your religious beliefs by using BC and AD, but please give me the same right to not acknowledge adherence to your religion when dating events.

Acknowledging the historical origins of a dating system does not constitute "adherence" to a religion. If I lived in a society that used a Hindu or Islamic or Chinese calendar, I wouldn't go around trying to revise the terms of THEIR calendar to suit MY anti-Hindu or anti-Islamic agenda. By the way, though it's a little early, I wish you a Merry Christmas!